Regarding Flames and Shadows
by Alithea
Summary: Shiori has a quiet moment of thought regarding her feelings about Ruka and Juri.


**Title: Regarding Flames and Shadows  
****Homework Assignment#4: Free Write  
****The characters herein are property of Shoujo Kakumei Utena and does not, in way, belong to me.  
****Author's Note: This takes place in the episode of Juri's final duel with Utena. Sometime between the end of the duel itself and before end of the episode when Juri hears the Shadow Play Girl's talking about Ruka. **

Shiori had fled from the overbearing confines of her dorm room after a few days of hiding from the world, and making vain attempts to reconcile with Ruka. It was stupid of her to have fallen so hard into, what she was seeing more and more as a lie. A lie she took part in creating and tried to keep alive, and yet she was not the only one who kept that lie living, but she felt as if she were the only one being punished for it. She was out of tears and was left only with a feeling in the pit of her stomach that gnawed away at her from the inside. It was an incessant ache, like the prick of a thousand needles scraping over her skin.

In the solitude of the late evening she had decided it would be safe for her to go outside. Utter and complete humiliation waited for her in the daylight hours, but she would find a way to deal with that in the morning. People would talk, and whisper and shake their heads in pity, in disgust, and in that fine line of contempt that always followed such grand public outcries. She could wish it away but it seemed useless to even think of it now. She had let herself fall into a trap and wasn't it karma that dictated that there was a price to pay for plotting and trying to cause harm?

She shrank under the thought of it. She didn't believe in karma. She was not sure she ever had anything she really believed, except...Yes, the word took her over and she found a smile that surfaced over the cover of her defeat and heartache. She believed in miracles. It was perhaps the only truth she had ever uttered. She believed in it and she had seen the way it worked. Hadn't she gotten what she wanted after all? Sure it had gone away, it had fled from her grasp, but she had it for a moment. She had what she wished for and it was fine, even if that wish had been false to begin with.

In her petite hands she carried with her a small notebook that was labeled for math, but that too was just another fallacy. It was really an instrument for her to do one of the only things that gave her an ounce of true happiness, not that she felt she deserved much of it. How happy he must be to know that she would forever have to live with the truth of his lessons? How he must pride himself on a job well done? Although she wasn't sure of his true intentions and even if she allowed herself to fathom a real guess she didn't want to face what it would mean. He probably was not so proud of his endeavor. The truth was, he would not care at all how he left her feeling. She deserved it after all.

The path she was on lead away to a fountain that she had not ventured to in years. It was guarded by two stone lions and while she felt she did not belong in that space, she was drawn to it. It was late though, and when she arrived she found it empty, the shadows moving in languid time to the rhythm of the water that reflected the light (stars and the pale shade of a half moon). Leaves were beginning to fall and there was a chill in the air that had, only days before, seemed warm and inviting.

Did she regret it all, lying to him, losing to him, wrapping herself in an illusion of what she felt she should want? But it was never really what she wanted. He was strong and he could beat _her_. It was so important at the time that he was someone who could defeat Juri. It seemed the only thing that would ever matter, even if it wasn't. It couldn't.

She took a seat on the fountain's edge and stared off into the water for a moment, surprising her self when she found the answer.

No, she didn't regret it. It hurt like hell now that it was over but she didn't regret it. She wasn't sorry. Everything was so broken now she felt she could see the entire picture. She felt she could see herself clearer and she saw herself as...Cruel. She was not a good person. She was a scheming and pathetic little thing. When she thought about it she could hardly think of a good reason why Juri had even bothered to remember her name, or give her any kind of attention at all. Maybe it was because they had been friends and maybe it was because of...

Shiori shook her head and let out a calming breath. She felt some tears welling up inside her but she had already cried so much it seemed stupid to do it anymore. She opened up the notebook and moved to the ground, leaning up against the short wall of the fountain for support. Violet eyes fixed themselves on the stone lions that were caught in a permanent state of agitation and ferocity. Then she picked up the pencil that had been inside the notebook marking a blank page and she began to draw.

When things were broken there was nothing more calming than to put something together. She was not forming the sketch out the broken pieces of her life, but she was using the momentum of paying attention to the statues' details to pull her thoughts into clarity.

Trying to hurt Juri had not been the best course of action... Having her own pitifully meek life revolve around her own jealousy was clearly stupid. She could not undo it. She was not sure she wanted to make it better. She could change schools again, not that it would make her parents happy, but she could come up with a reason that would... And she stopped because she was tired of telling lies, the thought of lying conjured up an image of Ruka in her head, in which he smiled cruelly back at her. Tormenting her with what she was, telling her that she was nothing. She was just liar, just a pretend being. She was nothing in the grand scheme of things, just another face in the crowd, just another unworthy bug trying and hoping to be something more, something brighter.

There wasn't anything wrong with wanting to be something more, but she supposed there was something wrong in the way she had been trying to achieve that status. And actually, she realized, as she finished the first lion, that she wasn't even trying to be brighter. She was just trying to torment and be...mean. She was seeing herself as something awful and the truth reflected back to her was not making her self feel better about things.

She bit at her lower lip and pulled her knees in closer to her chest, the notebook resting precariously on her knees. She leaned back a little more against the short wall, resting her head along the edge, and shutting her eyes. The sound of the water running filled her and she let her mind wander under the calming ripple and splash of the calming white noise that brought her further outside herself.

She couldn't find anything to be proud of, at least not with her current self.

In grade school not long after she had met Juri there were moments when she remembered better of herself. Like the time Juri had chickenpox and she had made a childish bouquet of paper flowers, in violet and orange colors, for her. She remembered being concerned about her friend that day when Juri's sister nearly drowned, and the odd feeling that settled in her stomach when she meet Juri's parents for the first time. It was all lost in memory now and she wondered if she was the only one that remembered. It was so hard growing up a boarding school kid. It was so taxing when adults would return to their lives that were not teachers. In those early days when she and Juri had just met, that first year, and for only a few years after, they had been each other's salvation. Juri had been luckier; she had had her sister even if it was only for a little while. Shiori had only had Juri... and then... Things changed.

Whether things had to change or things changed because they made them change hardly seemed to matter. Change had come eventually and it ruined everything. It tore them apart and at the time that had seemed fine to her. There she found something to really regret. Maybe she could never regret much more after that because she had done what she perceived to be right even if it wasn't. But that first sight of change, she regretted that. That first sight of things turning and breaking, Shiori had a feeling that maybe if she had been smarter and less selfish, she could have kept things from tearing into the darkness.

Opening her eyes she shifted her position and looked over the sketch of the completed lion. Her brow wrinkled in thought as she noted that on the surface the lions were fierce and strong, but taking in the detail a little deeper it was easier to see that the lions were not raging, they were in pain. They were hurt and as such acted as beasts do when they are hurt…They rage…They fight…

Shiori turned to a blank page. She decided that perhaps the lions were not the best subject matter for her at that moment. With a deep breath she put the pencil to the paper and rather than finding something to draw before her, she just drew. The lines she used were soft and hurried, not exactly accurate but they did not have to be. They were just for her and it wasn't as if she would ever let anyone see what she had drawn. As she began to linger on detail the lines grew harder, sharper, truly defined. It was no longer a sketch; it was a complete drawing.

She stopped to look at it and grimaced. Part of her was very pleased with the outcome and then she was also a little worried about what such a thing meant to her. In point of fact she could feel herself trying to hide the truth from view, but it was there and however much she wanted to deny it… She let that truth present itself fully and that ache from Ruka dulled and then turned sharper, becoming something else, stabbing at her in a completely new way and with completely different intentions.

"Stupid girl." She muttered to herself. She took the drawing from out of her notebook and folded it in half, placing it under a stone on the fountain's edge. "I'm a very stupid girl."

Shiori stood up and gathered the notebook in her arms. It was time to leave. It was getting very late and she wanted to try and make it to a class in the morning. She wanted to try to go back to normal, to be a face in the crowd, a forgettable girl.

She stepped along the path and stopped still in her tracks when she faintly heard the sound of a small stone being lifted and plunking into the water. If she had been braver…if she had more time to accept the truth she might have turned around to see what had happened. But she wasn't ready…All she was ready for was the new day. All she was ready for was the slightest bit of change.

And in that readiness she found herself wishing…and praying for a kind of miracle so that it might come true.

End…


End file.
